Forming the band with his brothers Jeff and Bruce, the band was considered one of the first hardcore outfits in the US, at least on the West Coast as The Bad Brains were active in the Washington, D.C./New York area at the same time. Their Out of Vogue EP was released on Joke Records in 1978 and is considered a pioneering record – fetching some impressive sums on eBay.

The band reunited in 2010, and even though he was diagnosed with Stage IV kidney cancer in January that same year, Mike kept gigging with the band until the very end. Rest in peace.

Hey, readers in the US, especially on the East Coast: This weekend sees Jamie and Erika of Loud Comix attending the 2014 MoCCA Artsfest in New York, and if you’re in the area you should definitely come by and show some support for independent, underground comics.

I checked the official page, and tickets are $5/day, it’s located smack dab in Manhattan (there are directions on the web site) and guests of honor include iconic artist Robert Williams (!!!) among others. Check it out!

The forthcoming changes to the Video Recordings Act will harm UK small businesses and compromise a thriving industry that is admired around the world.

This is unintentional and can be avoided by refining your “Draft Video Recordings Act 1984 (Exempted Video Works) Regulations 2014”. These draft Regulations will make publishing comprehensive DVD packages – editions that dissuade people from turning to pirated copies – financially unviable.

In the light of these unintended consequences, please revisit the draft Regulations.

Now, even though things probably won’t turn out quite as dramatic as I wrote in my previous post on the subject, the new BBFC guidelines will hit the indie DVD labels pretty hard and affect us genre fans. In essence, the new law means that not only do you need to classify the main feature of your DVD/Blu-ray release, but every interview, documentary, featurette that comes with it as well – running up quite a tab if you’re planning a drool-inducing überfan edition, as the BBFC charges a flat fee for their (mandatory) service.

This will not be the end of the UK indie labels, but most likely the days of their beefy DVD editions of horror, cult classics and other films outside the mainstream that fans all over the world enjoy. If you’re a citizen of the UK, and actually give a damn about the smaller independent efforts in your country, please do sign the petition. All it takes is your full name, email and post code. Sign it here and please spread the information on your blog, Facebook etc. Cheers!

It’s finally here! The second (but fifth in all) album from my oddity project Call Me Greenhorn. Entitled Space Kitty 2000, the follow-up to the 2013 album The Hit ‘In Sounds’ of Today’s Outside Crowd! offers eleven tracks written and recorded between December 2013 up to March of this year. No real reason for the title, it just struck me as “fun” – which in all honesty is at least 75% of the reason I’m doing this to being with.

Personally I am very satisfied with this collection of tracks. Listening to it now I think it has a nice flow and it seems that I finally arrived at a point creatively where all my influences – sans punk rock and 1980s American hardcore – blended together in a sound that showcase them all quite nicely. It’s all here; Old school soul, funk and R&B; cheesy Moog weirdness; lounge; retro-futur; Beastie Boys-styled breakbeats, 1980s new wave/synths (there’s even some Kraftwerk!) and I even managed to add some King Tubby-esque techniques into it all – including two dubs.

Available via Bandcamp and iTunes as of now, Amazon.com will be added next week with tons more to follow. If you’ve got Spotify or Last.FM you can stream the album here and here, and make sure to check out the Simian Walk video on YouTube (below) and Vimeohere!

Well, I finally got around to get a page on SoundCloud for my Call Me Greenhorn project, adding at least one song each from the over a dozen releases I did last year. As an added bonus I decided to upload the recently finished track Quijada from the coming Space Kitty 2000 album.

It’s official: I am teaming up with John Brito Films to create the intro theme for his upcoming horror/sci-fi/fantasy web series. Demos were created and sent and now we’ve agreed on a concept and sound that works for what he envisioned.

Like this:

So, this is turning out to be the day when we receive news of musical visionaries dying or what? Just found out via Rolling Stone Magazine that Devo guitarist Bob Casale passed away unexpectedly at the age of 61. Rumors state that he was found by his brother, but so far that’s just something I’ve seen posted on social medias, so take that bit of information with a grain of salt.

Other members were shocked by the news. His brother (and co-member) Gerard Casale offered the following statement:

As an original member of Devo, Bob Casale was there in the trenches with me from the beginning,” Gerald said in a statement. “He was my level-headed brother, a solid performer and talented audio engineer, always giving more than he got. He was excited about the possibility of Mark Mothersbaugh allowing Devo to play shows again. His sudden death from conditions that lead to heart failure came as a total shock to us all.

I’m sad to say that via Pitchfork I just found out that legendary producer – and founder of Red Star Records – Marty Thau recently passed away at the age of 75. Starting out working in promotion for such labels as Cameo-Parkway Records and bubblegum pioneers Buddha Records in the 1960s, he managed The New York Dolls and started Red Star Records in the 70s – helping launch the careers of Suicide, Blondie, The Real Kids and The Ramones.

A true visionary, Marty was as passionate about music as the artists he worked with. When mid-70s New York started to rumble with the new vanguards of rock ‘n’ roll he was there to witness them at CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City – and he saw it as the future, roughly 20 years ahead of the majority of the world I might add.

Although always keeping an eye out on the bottom line – he was a business man after all – he was never as motivated by money. “I’ve always believed that money shouldn’t be one’s motivator. If your creative instincts are superior to others then you’ll make all the money you’ll ever want” he stated in an interview with Frieda’s Whip, “Some disagree with that premise. I can only be guided by what I like and not what any marketing strategist tells me what the market wants.”

Legendary street punk outfit The Exploited – that pretty much provided the soundtrack for my 1980s – made it official on their Facebook page that their tour has been cancelled after vocalist Wattie Buchan suffered a heart attack on stage during a gig in Lisbon this Thursday.

As shown in the fan footage, the band had to cut their gig short and take the lead singer off stage, after which he was reportedly immediately taken to hospital. The band was one week into the seven-month Tour of Chaos with Hatebreed and Napalm Death. More via STV News.